Arts & Entertainment

Best Graffiti High Jinks Dallas 2012 - Nintendo Mural Performance Art

When we first heard that two guys were dressed like video game characters and painting a giant Nintendo mural in Deep Ellum, we didn't grasp the depth of the spectacle. A quick site visit revealed all: A graffiti artist named Kid NES and a graffiti writer named Eder had joined forces over their shared love of eight-bit gaming. Dressed up as WaLuigi and Wario, the arch nemeses of our favorite princess-seeking plumbers, the pair created a temporary mural. It looked like a screenshot from an early-model Mario Bros. edition, recreated on the side of Quixotic World. Only in this life-size version of the old school game, Mario was being painted into a trap where every possible joystick maneuver would end in his peril. Spinys, piranha plants, turtles and other-world-depositing green tubes all filled out the image. People went nuts. Women screamed from passing cars, professing their undying love of Nintendo through open windows. Vehicles flipped U-turns repeatedly so that the drivers could snag photographic evidence of the situation. Basically, it was awesome. And when the whole thing was done, they left us with a memento: a video of the mural being made, set to music.